


A Fall

by Anonymous



Series: Agents need therapy too [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Character Study, Dead Phil Coulson, Multi, POV Skye | Daisy Johnson, Post-Season/Series 05 Finale, Skye | Daisy Johnson Needs a Hug, Suicidal Thoughts, The Author Regrets Nothing, edited it same day, wrote this while having a panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:26:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26988964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Daisy is tired. Tired of pretending that the useless buzz of smoking can make the level of pain or grief she’s experienced go away. Tired of pretending that she can fill the chasm in her heart with anything but love. Tired of pretending that she can move on and be okay because she can’t; she won’t be okay.She isn’t okay.
Relationships: Lincoln Campbell/Skye | Daisy Johnson, Melinda May & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Phil Coulson & Skye | Daisy Johnson, Phil Coulson/Melinda May
Series: Agents need therapy too [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1845175
Comments: 16
Kudos: 60
Collections: Anonymous





	A Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to Kat, Sanctuaria, for the amazing beta, you're the reason this thing is coherent lmao
> 
> TRIGGER WARNINGS BEFORE YOU READ: thoughts of self harm, self harm (but not like. the typical way), thoughts of suicide, thoughts of worthlessness, non-graphic child abuse, smoking

Daisy hates smoking.

She tried it one time, when she was sixteen and in between foster homes. She couldn't remember where she had gotten access to a cigarette but it had probably been one of the older kids. Maybe John, maybe Ren. It didn't really matter. Daisy just remembered inhaling deep and being overwhelmed by the smoky burning sensation in her lungs as she involuntarily coughed. 

Daisy- Skye, at the time, thought it was a way to escape her pain. That's what she was told most of her teen years; that drugs can take your issues and problems away. Cigarettes were easiest to obtain. Somehow at least one of the kids in Saint Agnes always had one or two on them. Maybe cigarettes weren't quite drugs but it didn't stop the kids from smoking them anyway when the nuns were off taking care of the children. Skye used to watch as they’d share one cigarette because that would be all they could find that day. It would be passed around until it was barely a scrap of burnt paper, and then it’d be tossed into the bushes. Skye had heard somewhere that smokers who relit cigarettes might be at higher risk of lung cancer. She didn’t really care. 

One day, she joined in.

One time she ran away from a home that was okay but not okay (because nothing was okay), and she had ended up under a bridge in a public park, scared out of her mind. Somebody had offered her a bag of something- little capsules- in exchange for whatever she had. To 15-year-old her’s credit, she didn't take their offer despite the stolen wads of cash stuffed in her training bra and ratty sneakers. 

Daisy did remember getting told that it was a way for her to forget, to make it to all go away. 

But it didn't do that. 

Skye had taken a few more puffs of the cigarette before gagging and throwing it on the ground, but she still was in the middle of a very crappy reality. Her parents were still dead (or at least didn't want her), she still was too old to be adopted by anybody who cared, and she was just too broken. The cigarette had done nothing so she’d never tried again.

Until now.

Daisy sighs and takes another drag of the cigarette. 

She had managed to dig it out from the lost and found box that Mack and Yoyo had haphazardly set up in the common room after they all realized that a bunch of agents packed into a tiny bunker become  _ slobs _ .

Daisy had dug through the box curiously and had stumbled upon a pack with two cigarettes left; one of them halfway used. With no set objective in mind, she had gone up to the actual lighthouse and climbed all of the spiral steps, barely even noticing as she came out into the cold, early morning where the quiet outside still felt suffocating.

She had swung one leg and then another over the precipice of the lighthouse, scaring a couple of unhealthy-looking birds away, before settling bare thighs on the freezing concrete, pulling out the last cigarette.

Daisy coughs tightly for a moment.

Coulson would probably be mad at her. He would  _ definitely _ be, she knows. She isn't sure if she's doing it to spite him or if she still is holding on tight to that illusion that there is still something that can take her pain away.

But it can't. Maybe it represses it; maybe it distracts her but it does not take it away. The pain is a part of her now. Daisy is made up of pain and loss and shattered dreams. She’s made of anything but an identity. 

Daisy doesn’t know who she is. She isn’t nothing; she's definitely not nothing, she's just-

She used to think that she was Skye. A strong, tough teenager who didn't need anybody. Skye didn't  _ need _ anything, not her birth parents, not the nuns, not  _ love. _

Skye always told herself that she didn't need love. She liked to think that made the absence of it in her life hurt less but it didn't- it hurt just as bad. Maybe even worse. Lying to herself about how much she missed things she'd never had just caused her to miss them even more.

Then Skye found her birth parents- and she was finally  _ somebody. _ She was a daughter; Jiaying’s and Cal’s. She was Inhuman. Skye had always thought she was weird, she never fit in. Now there was an explanation. 

She was somebody special, for a little bit. Even to her psychotic parents she was special. They loved her, she knew, they just were misguided.

And then she was Daisy. Daisy Johnson. That was her real name; she’d found it after twenty-four — twenty- _ five _ years of looking. She wasn't even sure how she felt about it but she wasn't innocent Skye anymore. Maybe she wasn't Daisy but she sure wasn't Skye.

So Daisy Johnson was born. She knew now that she wanted- she  _ needed _ love. She couldn't live without somebody to love and appreciate her. Now Daisy knew what she needed. Now Daisy could finally make a difference. She rescued other Inhumans and helped save her race the way her mother had tried to, in her own, twisted way. 

Then she found Lincoln and she was his girlfriend and he was her boyfriend and they were partners in every sense of the word and then he-

Daisy had known who she was.

And Daisy had been wrong. 

Who she was died with Lincoln. Daisy Johnson had died with Lincoln. As much as she tried to deny it, she was not Daisy Johnson anymore. She was somebody different. 

She was Quake, then she was the Destroyer of Worlds, and now she is just Alone. 

Daisy inhales deeply as she collects her thoughts. She lifts the cigarette back up to her lips, looking out at the vast lake in front of her, reflecting the pink sky that is signaling dawn. She can see the twinkling lights of River’s End just beyond the water.

Daisy is jealous of them. They’re all just… people. They don't know what just happened mere weeks ago. They don’t know that they were going to die; be swallowed by the earth and just a miniscule part of the mass die-off of 7.8 billion humans. They’re innocent and they’re happy, like Skye. Like Daisy had once been. 

She wonders how many of them are children. How many of them have mothers, or fathers. Siblings, children, pets even. She wonders if any of them have ever felt broken. Shattered.

Daisy isn't broken. She can’t afford to be. She can't break, not anymore. She has gone through too much. Too much loss and death and fear. She is alone. But she isn't broken. 

She wishes she could break. She wishes she could still fall apart and cry into somebody's arms like she'd never been able to when she was a child, but she can't. She has to be strong. She  _ is _ strong. 

Daisy is tired of being strong. 

Daisy is tired. Tired of pretending that the useless buzz of cigarettes can make the level of pain or grief she’s experienced go away. Tired of pretending that she can fill the chasm in her heart with anything but love. Tired of pretending that she can move on and be okay because she can’t; she won’t be okay. 

She isn’t okay.

Daisy allows her feet to dangle limply, feeling the strong wind from the height pressing against her calves and running up her spine, making her shiver in the crisp morning air. Her perch above the rest of River’s End, hundreds of feet above the water, gives her a buzzing feeling in her chest, the only thing that feels warm right now.

Maybe it’s just the cigarette.

Daisy doesn't look down. She keeps her eyes out on the horizon and sees the sun beginning to rise, and she knows. She could be done.

One inch, maybe two: just a shift of her weight and Daisy, or Skye, or Quake, or whatever jumbled mess of all three she is would be gone.

“Would that really be so bad?” she wonders aloud. Her voice is hoarse, still raw from the sobs that have torn through her throat in the last week. “I would feel nothing. No happiness, but no pain either.” Daisy plays with the edge of her sweater sleeve absently, her eyes trained on the rising sun.

As the sun will rise, giving light to the quiet dawn, maybe Daisy can just  _ fall _ .

No pressure to protect everybody when she can’t even protect herself. Maybe she would see Coulson again. She isn't sure if she wants to, though, not like this. She wouldn't want to see the disappointed look on his face when he would find out how she’d given up. 

Daisy always wanted to make him proud above all things. She wanted to make the team proud. She wanted to give them a reason to love her because whenever she was a child that was all she had. Her usefulness. 

She had to be good at dishes, good at cleaning, good at looking cute and good at saying the right things just so that she could be loved. She couldn't even get the basic human right to be  _ loved. _ She had to work for it.

That way of living never went away when she grew up. 

She is just as alone, just as scared, and she is fucking twenty-eight. She is a goddamn adult. She is supposed to be okay, why isn’t she okay?

When she was a child, the thing that got her through was that she would be okay one day. She, not the uncaring state, not the nuns, not her fosters… she would own herself. Make her own decisions. Be able to move on from the disaster of her childhood.

But she couldn't. She escaped one hell just to enter another. Her childhood was filled with the absence of love but her adulthood has been full of too much love. She has loved so deeply and in return she has lost  _ everything. _

She is so tired of losing things. She is just so tired. Her limbs move like they’re going through mud and her head is pounding and heavier than her body and she could just  _ fall _ .

Daisy listens to her breaths. In through the mouth, out through the mouth. It’s almost like she is panting.

She is afraid.

“I’m scared,” she says aloud.  _ That doesn’t sound right. _

“I’m scared,” she repeats, but her voice comes out like it is small and lonely. 

She  _ is _ lonely. 

Daisy sighs. “I'm scared of the future and I'm tired. I just want you back, Coulson. I just want one more of your speeches again, one of those cheesy-ass inspiring speeches that would tell me  _ hey, no, don't do that you have so much to live for _ ,” she scoffs. “Well, that's probably exactly what you would say and yet I still want to do this.” 

She takes another drag from the cigarette. It doesn't burn anymore. It’s starting to melt into the cold, sameness of everything. She tries to hold on to the buzz as tight as possible, desperate for the warmth to stay.

“I'm scared,” she repeats. “I'm scared of a life without you.” She pauses. “May’s scared too. I can see it. It's not fear, so much as an underlying pain that laces everything she says or does. That's the saddest thing ever, don't you think?” She laughs wryly. “Pretty fucking sad, actually.”

The cigarette edge starts to burn into her fingers, and it is the only thing that’s keeping her attached to the concrete. The pain in her fingers is the only thing other than the grey grief blanketing her that she can feel. And while it’s making her feel, she can’t jump. She’s too scared. When the cigarette will just be a stub, she will lose the burn and once again be swallowed by the fuzzy and nothing.

And then nothing will be keeping her from jumping.

Daisy is in the middle of an ocean that’s tossed around by a storm. Waves crash down over her head and send her tearing into the murky depths. She can’t breathe, and she's struggling to come up for air as she’s drowning in her own tears-

And then she surfaces. And it’s like the storm was never there. The water seems still and calm so she inhales fresh air, before it’s revealed that calm water was hiding even bigger waves and they come and tear her into pieces again the water filling her nostrils, her throat, her lungs. Pockets of air bubble up from her throat as it fills with water and she claws at her neck. She screams, but it's silent and she's just inhaling liquid. 

She is drowning.

And she doesn't want to fight anymore.

Daisy swallows, her throat dry. “You know, she was broken after Bahrain, but I think this broke her even more. She won't be the same and neither will I. You can't just expect us to be.” Daisy sniffs. “You don’t expect us to be the same, I know.” 

“Daisy?”

And then the waves cease, if only for a moment, at the voice of one of the few people she doesn’t want to leave behind. 

Daisy stills, tucking the still-lit cigarette inside her palm and hiding it. They’re behind her, and she’s grateful they can’t see the tears dripping down her cheeks.

She hears them shift, and then their voice is gentle, steady, an anchor pulling Daisy away from the waves:

“Come back inside, Daisy. It’s cold.”

Daisy snuffs the cigarette (that didn’t help the pain at all anyway) into the concrete discreetly, feeling the burn of it against her palm searing into her skin as everything becomes sharper around her and the water becomes calm again. 

She can't give up. Not yet. Not when people still need her. 

She isn't sure what she is. She isn't Skye and she isn't Quake and she isn't the destroyer of worlds and she isn't Daisy Johnson. She isn't any of those things without Coulson.

What she is is somebody that can help put the pieces together, like Coulson always trained her to do. 

She sighs and swings her legs over the ledge and back down onto the ground.

“Okay.”

The waves will have to wait another day.


End file.
